Trust myself in the process. Through the process. Have faith in another person’s choices. Because if it weren’t possible; if people couldn’t change for the better (or potentially even the worse) all the psychiatrists on this wide universe would be out of business. Side of the road. Luggage in hand. And let me tell you, I’ve known and conversed with quite a many, and none of them have empty pockets.

Because it is maddening. Going against your best judgments to go beyond what you know you’ve been conditioned to be thus far. Because it has to fully unteach you what every other bad experience has taught you. It has to be the feeling with your heart that says ‘go slow’—but the feeling in your mind that says ‘you still have to go.’

Like this:

We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems—the ones that make you truly who you are—that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person—someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, “This is the problem I want to have.”

—Galway Kinnell

What is this? Who am I now? If I like her better does that mean who I was wasn’t real at all? What if I made myself up? Does this make me a fiction writer? What if I look for the worst to ‘save face,’ but what if it’s steady? Am I going to ruin it now? What if I fall apart? What if it never comes together? What if it comes together as I fall apart? Does it matter? When it stays the same doesn’t it still change? What if I want nothing to change? How many dishes can I break a year and still stay sane? Anybody know a good body shop, my car needs work? I need a new car. I want books that need a ladder to get to in my house. I wanna share my wishlist. I think he might listen. I really mind the turbulence, I’m ready for the landing. I’m really going to try my damnedest. This is the problem I want to have.

Like this:

I plan for the worst. Hope for the best. I fret. There’s always a time limit. When the time runs out, I kickbox or I run. When I was a little girl, my Dad used to walk into our family room on Saturday mornings–maybe seven am-ish, and I’d be playing mystery computer games.

I played this one called “The Legend of Kyrandia.” I actually wouldn’t sleep until I figured out the next puzzle, lest I’d sooner fall out across the keyboard. It was a mesh between trying to figure out what it was that unlocked some secret magical door, and what it was that left you worse off than you were before. The trees would grow oversized spiraling roots and tentacles like octupuses—grabbing like flytraps. It was magical realism, animated. I actually wanted to figure out why so-and-so got stoned and how I might be able to un-stone him.

It was almost as if my imagination took over and became the video-story. To this day, I refuse to watch scary movies. Watching scary movies is a surefire preventative measure for me getting any sleep. I suffer from night terrors, not as bad as incessant snoring, yet still horrific. I do not kid, it’s pretty fantastic.

I’ve gotten to a place where I’ve realized I have to trust in someone else to reach my fullest potential. It’s called delegating. The concept is the same as my hairstylist hiring help to wash and condition my hair while she styles other clients; then later, she’ll finish by pressing, primping, and styling me. This way she reaches everyone. This works in the same way corporate organizations have hierarchy levels. This is the same way problems often take more than one brainchild to compute.

When I initially started this quick write I felt a twinge of sadness that I’d been programmed in this worrisome way. That my loads of responsibilities and experiences were so heavy and that I was in dire need of a vacation from myself. Would I even know how to take one? I’ve gone to to New York a few times. Mostly for business, once for fun and I didn’t have any. I realized one of the places I most admire I’ve been many times and yet never actually seen. Being this way has always been a survival mechanism for me. Being driven is a way of life and those that have it, have it, and those that don’t—you can sooner expect them to never have it.

I have to juggle the balance between not letting my happiness depend on the things I may lose, and trusting others to represent me well.

Often, I’m hard-pressed to tell people I write nonfiction. Why? Because my writing experience includes fashion writing and editing work. Because publishing work/seeking representation, and re-writing takes time. Time, I tend to not have much of, because I’m busy writing and working. I was at a gig that had a lot of Press folks not too long ago. I was with a friend of mine and I had to say those fatal words.

“I write nonfiction.” Her eyes hit the floor and went wayward.

Obviously she’s only read fiction, that—or writing wasn’t a profession she respected all that much. She turned away nonchalantly and started talking to some other people behind her.

“O, she think I’m soft ’cause I write nonfiction???” I exclaimed to my friend, puffing out my shoulders and poking out my lips. At this point he’s laughing hysterically.

“Just watch, one o’ these days my nonfiction is gonna blow her whole shit up”

“Let’s go before you make any more threats to the innocent via your yet to be published work” he mumbled at me.

She has no idea but her character would definitely be dead if I ever write magical realism. Death by the herculean keyboard and my irritant craving for a red velvet cupcake.

May the odds be ever never in her flavor. Happily better after. The End.

He said “I want the opposite of everything with you because you only remember the bad”
I gave him a sad face and said if you keep saying things like that I’ll stay sad.

So these are your orchids. And then he asks me if I’ve ever seen orchids. Because these orchids, he said—eyebrows up—are talking orchids. Crawling up stucco—designer orchids on glowing wallsides, heaploads.

Let me tell you what they’re saying, he leans close. They admire the way you laugh, and the way you love your Dad. Acquired tastes. They love, your neuroses–spun together–next to the space heater.

Well this. I tell him. Is honeydew. It is sweet, unless spoiled. It doesn’t need water or sunlight, it needs to be savored. It has a window of time, and this honeydew. She has a line. Like the lining in your collar, or your lack of consideration.

And it can’t be suckled into the ouch patch, you know the part you can’t get back,

A line that,
Cross it if drawn
Balance if it waves
Careful in anomaly, (no
matter how little we have.)

He said, I haven’t promised you anything. Which is otherwise clandestine, which is microscopically kaleidoscopic, which is bullshit if I never heard it, otherwise known as art deco blue. I wanted Tinkerbell’s castle, I would’ve given up sadness for a clue where.

And I’d have grown him more than fruit and flowers. He as in you, you as in admirer.
But I guess I have to love you from afar. And I guess I have to love you where you’ve fallen,

which means move on.
Which is a line. A line once drawn—
if crossed is gone. Which is how I know it,
that does not offer you honeydew or glowing orchids anymore.
And so I leaned over to the flowers, and whispered to their spines:

“You have specifically been placed in a box marked ‘why for?’”

And the world, which is how I now know it, has aligned.

—Happy Valentine’s Day to all those I secretly admire, love Lalanii

“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.”

I started writing on this site for a few reasons, but mainly to share. Sharing has a way of coming around full circle—but not always in the way one might expect. This is nonfiction so as a preamble I tell my friends and family that they might all be written about, although I never use names unless I’ve made them up. So, now, after having lost two people I cared about due to the content of my blog, I’ve decided to write even more personal shit. Ta-daa.

Topic of discussion today is sleeping with a man/woman too soon, which has been written and re-written, but probably not as ridiculously. I feel like the Salesperson that indubitably gets sold, but here go I:

The courting process is built on assumptions. ASSumptions that change with conversation and habits. I’m a woman, and generally, we are creatures of habit, but that can be said for some men as well. If I go out on a date with a person, I’m immediately wrestling with ASSumptions, because we use them to make good decisions about strangers. So, if the man I’m on a date with keeps darting his eyes across the room and not making good eye contact, he either has a girlfriend that’s a high profile detective, or he’s trying to see who will witness him killing me. I’m going to assume my ass to the bathroom and never return.

The same applies to the habits that form if you were to make it out of that date alive, deeming him an ok guy. Next you have the text messages. Now, I’m all for text messages, but a lot can be said about text tone, and so much more about a person that picks up the phone and uhh, calls me. It’s damn near like receiving snail mail, now-a-days. Score! But secondly, and more seriously what we are learning about in between this time, is if we can build trust in a person or not. This is synched with the building of memories. We are finding out what a future (if there is any) will be like with this person, and we are building rapport. This is why sharing about one’s past or talking about childhood at any point is important to friendships. Building on those foundations—just as important to relationships. Or standby to get separated into a box marked, “for now.”

Jozen Cummings of Until I Get Married wrote about this very topic a few weeks back and said “If you sleep with a woman too soon, and you suck, she will leave you. Wait for her to fall for you emotionally first, then deliver the sub-par performance you’re capable of.” So real.

But from a woman’s perspective, and only because my besties and I were speaking on this very situation… if we like you and you suck in bed, we’ll try again, and sometimes even again, just to make sure it wasn’t something we could’ve worked with. All of whom shall remain nameless (yes first hand my friends and I have vouched for these shenanigans) men have sex for thrill, for the happy end, for the fact of doing it. Sometimes they’re really into you, sometimes not so much. Women? We have sex, mostly (not always, but definitely mostly) for love. We want it to go somewhere. Maybe not to the moonlight and back, but we want it to go somewhere.

“Men, they jump for money. Women, for love.”

—Man On A Ledge, Movie 2012

What I said it! Women are emotional beings. I mean occasionally you get the girl who has conditioned herself to separate the two—lust, love. But even in doing so, a woman is a liar if she says to herself that she wasn’t hoping for that good guy afterwards. We ALL are. Get that fellas? All of us are still counting on you, so no this is not a male bashing party.

So when is the right time, you ask?

Ah, we can go into vibe, conversation, I’d usually measure for commonality. Discussing value can go on and on… every situation was different. A guy friend of mine said he’d slept with a girl after a drunken night, a stranger, and said that afterwards—that awkwardnesss, he felt her embarrassment, for her. He said when he woke all he could think of when he looked at her was, and in his exact words:

“I don’t think I would like to do that ever again with you.”

Another of my friends has trouble with caring at all emotionally thereafter. She said her proof is in the days to come. My sister married her high school sweet tart, also the father of her children—and still to this day will claim she wasn’t pregnant with her first child when she rushed to the altar. I slept with a guy for a year and a half and kept telling my friends he was “a one night stand.” Eventually, my bestie said to me, “it’s been a very loooooooong night then, dontcha think?” I didn’t leave him because he didn’t commit to me, I stopped calling him because he wasn’t honest with himself or his feelings.

I’m saying all of that to say this: The theory is you have to kiss a few frogs. Or, err &*%#. Which is personally frightening for me since my emotions aren’t controlled by anything physically (only), but rather uncontrolled when taken into oblong loops and upside down dances. I find that when taking chances, my best judgments elude me. Especially in moments like these:

“I respect you,” he murmured. “and your views. I think of you as an equal. I respect your brains, and all those big words you like to use. But I also want to rip your clothes off and have sex with you until you scream and cry and see God.”
—Lisa Kleypas, Smooth Talking Stranger

The point I want to make is that it isn’t the sex on the first, second, or thirty-ninth date that matters. It’s the intimacy in the moments that develop far before that. The part that keeps your thoughts twirling, even after whatever excuse isn’t given. Even after it’s all lost and over and you know you knew better, but you didn’t do any better because you knew too much better. The part you maybe should’ve fought for, but pride—she got in the way, and then when she didn’t it was too late. The part that’s shy when approached now, fumbles, foibles. The part that doesn’t understand why it crumbles so quickly, wait a year—no bueno. Wait weeks, months, days, hours, give each other raunchy looks across karaoke bars. Doesn’t matter, much, the outcome has all been the same when measured against others’ experiences. I’ve asked men, women—randomly—strangers, friends. When is it a good time to invite a man into your bedroom, with the hopes that he doesn’t turn down the invitation to all of your other rooms? A bust. It’s all subjective.

I’ve heard the typical, ‘a person looses interest, when it wanes, and if they do it wasn’t meant anyway.’ I’ve heard as long as you know their parents’ last names, I’ve heard that if you hope enough, fairy tales come true. I’m waiting on the latter. Well, first the tiff, then the kiss:

“I was just thinking if the sex with you is one-tenth as fun as arguing with you. I’ll be one happy bastard.”
“You’ll never find out. You——–”
He kissed me.
—Lisa Kleypas, Smooth Talking Stranger

What classifies the Good Girls from the Bad Girls, really? The ones whose partners can be counted on one hand? Love might have me mistaken, but I can rest assured I’ve never slept with anyone I couldn’t see myself with permanently—not planning showers or picking out kitchen tiles, but I’ll admit, I am a force of romanticized nature. Is it ruining me? Us all?

“For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer—the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you’ve never had sex, you’re a “good” (i.e. “moral”) girl and therefore worthy of praise.”

—Jessica Valenti, The purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women

Yes, there’s the treasure idea. The “kept” woman, but at what point does it start to matter less about how fast a person jumps in the sack with another person, and more about the two people individually and how they work together? More about the way they trust each other, and understand each other. What about the married people I asked that both said “you never really know your husband/wife anyway, but we just keep trying?” What about the couple I asked that’s been married eight years and they both (without consulting each other) said “we make each other the best versions of ourselves” Or the homeboy who said he would never still be with his girl if the sex wasn’t sOoO good? Or the girl I went to undergrad school with, who said she always sleeps with a man the first night and it’s never not become a relationship.

Or sometimes I wonder if I can’t always do better than what’s in front of me? Is it all just a ploy? Drake said “all those other men were practice.” y’know? My best girl and I fought over the double standard: that a womanizer is whatever, but if a female has three partners she’s a, what’s that called now, “ratchet?” I keep hearing it.

I’ll put it this way, for me:

“Sex isn’t good unless it means something. It doesn’t necessarily need to mean “love” and it doesn’t necessarily need to happen in a relationship, but it does need to mean intimacy and connection…There exists a very fine line between being sexually liberated and being sexually used.”
—Laura Sessions Stepp, Unhooked

There’s tons more to dating than sex, but sex is the part that makes the difference in loopy or comatose. A little turned around, or head across arm on the steering wheel. A little flutterbye in the tummylovely, or I swallowed a sick whale flapping in there.

Like this:

People like titles. Names. On resumes. For songs, names of our goldfishies, turtledoves, bunnies, names of our decrepit family members. It always sounds so much better when I speak to my waiter by name, maybe a wink or two. How much more personality did my car have to me when I gave her the name “Strawberry?” Tons.

But what about relationships? Do we title our relationships? And if not, do we eventually? How soon after we either begin dating someone or begin sleeping with a person do we say out loud or in our heads, that this person can formally be introduced as “my boyfriend/girlfriend?”

Is it subjective depending upon who the person is and the vibe/aura you feel, or the chemistry this person emits? Should there be standards and rules and when you meet the “Gamechanger” (the person that goes against said standards, rules, and supersedes expectations) do those rules stand to be broken?

Does any of it matter if you’re having a damn good time enjoying the person and getting to know whatever it is they’re about, or does the lack of title set you up (me up, us as women up) for heartbreak?

My friend and I were having this talk over Asti (sweet white wine) the other day. Initially she spoke about the title: “Enjoy yourself and see what it does.” (Her exact words were “See what it do”) and then you wait, you wait in what isunexpected. I haven’t mentioned yet that surprises annoy me a bit in this way:

Tangent alert: Surprises annoy me because they mess with my ability to plan, to deliver ready-conclusives, and OCD my way into or outta something. Surprises force me to relinquish control. We are talking about a person who generally knows what time a movie starts, ends, and is generally there to see the majority of the previews—why? Because of Moviefone. But that same urgency-adrenaline-wreck a surprise gives to me, is the same emotional tug that intrigues me. The break in monotony. The element of the unexpected causes me to come back for more, while the predictable bores me after what I’ve painfully realized more than once, is about ten days. —Lalanii, on surprises

Halfway through the bottle she confesses (aka contradicts) that the “title,” or rather, “recalling when she knew things were going in the right direction” was undoubtedly when her “Gamechanger” put his arms around her and whispered at the tip of her earlobe the musical words she longed to hear. She’d asked where they were going—or what they were going to do (I can’t remember which) and he’d responded with something to the likes of:

“You’re my girl, anywhere you wanna go, anything you wanna do is fine, jus’ wanna be with you.”

Realize that she ain’t heard a thing after You’re my Girl. Real Noah, in The Notebook-like. This is why us women are fucked up! If we keep waiting for Noah, the likelihood of anything really pretty happening is slim, because that was just a movie. A man on today’s market-menu expects a woman to do the majority of the work for him. Let me not generalize, I HATE categories as much as I love them, but it is true that a colossal majority of decent men like to be pursued these days, in my own humble experience.

I agree with reciprocation, although, I just can’t see myself chasing. After a certain amount of time—motives, perceptions, and possibilities become clear.

I remembered this guy I used to hang with, a while back. For me the most important things, the things that grab me in are:

Intelligence

Drive and potential

Physical attributes

Kismet and chemistry

Consistency

Let’s not fail to say that in the story I’m going to quickly sum up—this man had all of these. Maybe a stretch to say his drive was uncommonly strong, but his potential made up for the lack of drive in the way people usually make excuses for the shortcomings of the people we like. He was incredible, he could’ve worn the red suit with the cartoon i, mid-chest, incredible. One of the very few people I used to stay up all night talking to and head straight to work after, never having closed my eyes. The type of person with an infectious demeanor. His presence was what I won’t forget, long after I’ve forgotten the emotions that developed over the 1.5 years we hung out frivolously. By hung out, I mean, I got attached. He got, high.

He broke the standards, as in, I don’t like men that smoke, generally. But I rationalized that he was a functional smoke-a-holic, though they rarely ever are. A week and maybe three days into the most rapturously enchanted delightful overflow, I was spent emotionally. What did I ask this man after knowing him for almost two-weeks?

“Where is this going? I mean, like, what do you want, or like, do you see yourself in a relationship? And if so, when?”

If I were on-stage somebody would’ve thrown a big ass avocado at my forehead. [klunk] It might have been the most brilliantly-idiotic and majorly-awesomely clumsy thing I’ve ever done. My best friend would’ve whispered “whooooooahh horsey!” His response:

“Man, you cool, but I on’t even really know you like that yet, I don’t really know you Lalanii”

Might I stress the usage of my name (the only title I have at this point) echoing melodically in my ear, confirming more strategically—my dumbassness. I spent the rest of the year with him. I’d meet other people, not like him, but other people, and I’d talk to them—but my nights belonged to him, and not always physically, but mostly—and always intimately. It got to the point where my call would cause him to answer the phone,

“What time?”

Yea, and this was the guy I would swear wasn’t anywhere near my type. If there is such a thing that matters enough.

“Time” was my title. I should’ve just changed my name to Time. Fix this whole mess up, right here and there. What I know now, that I didn’t know then is if someone is consistently giving you their time—the energy to speak to you, answer your calls, letting you in a bit—little by little, you have the answers to most of your questions. At least for the current frame of mind, which is all we can and need to see. If things don’t move along progressively, then you gauge what you’re willing to accept, and how long you’re willing to accept it for. Especially, without a title. So you see, not having a title can work in our favor, ladies and gentlemen, because we can essentially have less leeway—have less patience if so desired, and having a title can work less in our favor for the expectations that a “title” generally prematurely places on a relationship, usually before that relationship is ready.

If a name doesn’t matter try calling out the wrong one in the throws. No, I kid. I kid.

Not having a title coincides with surprises for me. The title behaves the same way in my mind. How marvelous is it to receive flowers you weren’t expecting? Very marveloso. But how fantastic is it to have your un-titled interest come over and replace a burned-out lightbulb? Unusually phenomenal. It’s the element of surprise. And practicality. And the fact that he noticed, and he gets triple points for me not having to ask for a teensy favor, ’cause you know how us damsels hate to have to ask.

Yes, there’s comfort in the feeling of “just knowing” when something is right, and leaving it at that. There’s more comfort in the things two people understand between each other that they don’t have to say or speak about at all. Often times, in the interest of understanding and communication it is best to ask more questions before you allow your heart to ask for anything as bigly as asking for a title.

It should be clear that when a woman (or man) wants a title what she is probably asking you for is your undivided attention. He or she is hoping for the grandiose introduction of belonging to someone. Namely, you. Problem is, it isn’t warranted because there are so many people that don’t respect it anyhow.

A quote I love from the movie Love Jones:

Nina Mosley:You always want what you want when you want it. Why is everything so urgent with you?Darius Lovehall:Let me tell you somethin’. This here, right now, at this very moment, is all that matters to me. I love you. That’s urgent like a motherfucker.

The movie follows two young lovers who—if both were initially honest with their feelings for each other, could have avoided the heart-break, or the break up all together. It highlights that even through the harder moments we must all recognize what is there, what that Time means to us, the small Time. The large amounts of Time.

So much pride in courting these days. Tit for tat. When I watched Love Jones the other day it hit so close to home I had to re-think one of my all time favorite quotes:

“All of these people running around here jumping, … falling in love ain’t s**t. Somebody talk to me, please, about how to stay there.” —Love Jones

So many superficial misconstrued shenanigans, so much hiding behind what has hurt us, or what we fear will. Yea, I’m human, so I want to be linked and relevant to someone other than myself, and correspond individually—while existing consecutively, yes… but sometimes I wonder why it can’t just be so wide—why for me it’s so hard to unfold and discover? Why do we need to owe each other anything?

All I ever wanted… was a beach house with bay windows trimmed in yellow—opposing interior walls grey—and one person to think my faults were moldable.

Movable. Musical. Mutable, and journey-full. He’d wear a newsboy cap and drink chai and have no problem sitting back to back in the middle of our picnic where we might share apples. Or we might both at least enjoy the idea of sharing apples, but opt for cinnamon topped cheeses, raisin rosemary crackers, and melon instead.

He’d probably decide on our dinner fixins because he’d understand that if I’d been writing or editing that by the time I realized what was going on it’d be dark already and “our son” would be exclaiming that he’s staaaaaaaaaarving, and by “our son,” I’d mean my son, by a previous father, but “our son” because he’d never pose any distinction on those specifics and he’d explain how he’d known from the first moment he’d shared proverbial apples with me that he was cut out to be a father, a friend, and a foundation for us as a family.

All I ever wanted was a beach house, with 12 ft. ceilings and overlarge pastel mosaic doors where he’d come through every evening and never say “honey, I’m home,” but rather, “a little help here, in your vows you said you loved me?” And at the top of the stairs there I’d stand. Big-bang-kapow-smile like I just ate calorie-less pie—hands on hips in my pink stilettos, boyshorts, and his oversized sweatshirt. “What took you so long?”

*

Hope Edelman taught a seminar today entitled “Who’s Telling Your Story? Persona in Creative Nonfiction.” I listed nearly 20 separate personas I either have or want to inhabit in my writing. The above snippet was written from the perspective of a single mother/turned wife. The piece had to begin with: All I ever wanted _______. Over the course of the next six months my nonfiction pieces will start to evolve as I challenge myself to push and play with my voice on the page.

P.S. The man I describe above is presently fictional, but those shoes exist.

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Some days, I just don’t feel well. And those days, are most days, these days. I wonder when luck will buck. When the sunlight will beam through the wall I’ve probably built too high. What have I lost since I’ve come undone? How much of me? If there’s a break, will I fall through it—or receive it? Albert Camus said “A work of art is a confession.” Maybe I’m done bleeding. What. Was. I. Thinking? Where were you when you were needed? How come you couldn’t see through that? What’s going to be the difference? Nothing is for better or worse—that I’ve seen yet. If you keep pretending it might get better, it doesn’t move at all. I should have played with more dolls when I was little, more easy bake ovens, more puzzles, more role-playing. Less pens and composition booklets. I’d be more equipped for the real world.

And then again Camus also said:

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
—Albert Camus

How come when it rains there are no gutters for me? There’s no “safe word,” there’s no “Easy Button?” How come when he speaks in my dreams does it still sound like a lullaby? And I’m a big girl. With a soft blanket, that’s been watching Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit for five days straight, and I still feel sorry for myself. Every time I wake up, my characters are still asleep. How I will manage? Who cares enough? If any of this was ever worth it? How do you know when your sacrifices were worth it? When do I give up if they weren’t?

Where is my fucking broomstick and when Ryan Gosling will call me. When he does, should I answer? This is what I think of.

Like this:

I’m a sensually sexual person. But it comes second to comfort. And there’s a good chance that there are 95 things that go on in my life in one hour, that make me uncomfortable. I fight them: Spiders scare me. Headaches annoy me. Neurotic eruptions. Delusional allergies. Slow uninteresting commentary. Shame. Disappointment. A dirty unorganized house. Lack of ambition. Worry.

Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear of you leaving, fear of your thoughts, fear of your lack of interest, fear of your over-sure-ness, your narcissism, fear of you not feeling the way I feel about you—for me. If I am at least 80% comfortable and those fears are addressed and not left up to MISINTERPRETATION, we’ll be making love until tomorrow’s tomorrow—room service requested, please be well rested.

Anyway, I was dating a guy once that wanted to talk about everything beforehand. He text me to see if I was busy before he called. He’d ask me while I was on the date with him, if I was having a good time? (Space -filler conversation? Or really can’t tell by my body language if the time we are having is good?) He went in heaps and tore through boundaries to assure me that he understood me. Why not listen to me more, before you proclaim?

The fact is that if he understood me, he’d know that the part that was good was the planning—the part that was bad was there was no unexpected surprise. If you have to text me to ASK me if you CAN call, don’t bother calling me. If you have to ask me WHILE ON THE DATE if I am “having fun” you aren’t paying attention. Why not ask me after the time is over how it was for me? And if you constantly reassure me that you understand, then why aren’t I comfortable enough to be jumping in your jacuzzi tub naked? I’m just sayin’?

I agree that women want to be desired at all times, but only want men to act on it when they’re in the mood. Why? Because we want:

The man that is so in sync with us that it makes us comfortable to know he thoroughly grasps the situation and has empathy, tolerance, knowledge and comprehension of her mind set. The man that knows when the hug is needed, when the anger is called for, when talking it out is necessary, when it’s time for tea, when wine might suffice, when we need a patron shot, and when reading to me is better.

I’ve never been the person that didn’t “Take Care.” I will fold up the clothes, whip up the chicken and scampi dinner, light the candles, discuss your boring ass work protocol, bring you a beer, throw a cover over you if you fall asleep, and think of you as much (if not more) than I think about myself. Is it too much to ask that I be comfortable?